Prevalence and determinants of undernutrition among under-five children residing in urban slums and rural area, Maharashtra, India: a community based cross sectional study
Abstract Background Undernutrition among under five children in India is a major public health problem. In India almost 60 million children are underweight. Despite India’s growth in economy, child mortality rate due to undernutrition is still high in both urban and rural area. Studies that focuses on undernutrition in urban slums are scarce. Hence present study was carried out to measure all forms of undernutrition like underweight, stunting and wasting. Methods A community based cross sectional study was conducted in 16 randomly selected clusters in two districts of Maharashtra state,India. All 2,929 mothers of under five children from these clusters were included in the study. Data was collected by house to house survey by interviewing mothers of underfive children.Odds ratio was calculated to determine association between the variables. Results Total 3,671 under five children were covered. Mean age of the children was 2.38 years (± SD 1.365).Stunting (45.9%) was found to be the commonest form of undernutrition among under five children, followed by underweight (35.4%), and wasting (17.1%). Sex of the child (urban slum; OR=1.32, rural area OR=1.63) birth order (rural area; OR= 0.47), immunization status (urban slum; OR=0.23) exclusive breast feeding (urban slum; OR=0.51), childhood infections like diarrhea(rural area OR= 1.69) acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) (rural area OR= 0.82), economic status of the family, (urban slum OR= 1.32), maternal age (P = 0.001)and maternal education(P <0.001) had either positive or negative influence on nutritional status of the children from urban slums and rural area. Conclusion Undernutrition in the form of underweight and stunting is more prevalent than wasting in the urban slum and rural area. It was related to sex of the child, economic status of the family, partial immunization of the child, ARI (Past 1 month) and maternal education. Improvement of immunization of under five children and maternal education will improve the nutritional status of the child. Trial registration-This article is part of baseline data of the project, hence not related to trial registration. After baseline data principal investigator had done trial registration retrospectively.